#wolfkissed

Day 7 of Codextober (yes I know it’s November 🤷🏼‍♀️)

Summary: Eivor is forced into an arranged marriage with the princess of Jorvik, to help strengthen the Raven Clans alliance with Jarl Halfdan.

The longship cut through the icy waters of the River Ouse like a blade, its dragon-head prow a silent herald of a fate Eivor Wolf-Kissed had never sought. Ravensthorpe, his home, the clan he protected—it all felt a world away from the stone-and-timber walls of Jorvik rising before him. This was not a raid for plunder or a quest for glory. It was a delivery. He was the cargo, a bargaining chip in a game of alliances.

Jarl Halfdan Ragnarsson’s great hall was thick with the scent of roasting boar, stale ale, and a deeper, more metallic smell that Eivor, with a warrior’s keen nose, recognized as sickness. Halfdan sat upon his high seat, a bear of a man whose frame was still powerful but whose eyes held a distant, feverish glint. The famed son of Ragnar Lothbrok was slowly being hollowed out from within.

“Eivor Wolf-Kissed!” Halfdan’s voice boomed, though it rasped at the edges.

“The saviour of Ledecestrescire! The bane of Kjotve the Cruel! Welcome to Jorvik!”

Eivor dipped his head. “Jarl Halfdan. Your reputation echoes in every longhouse in England.”

“And yours screeches like a battle-falcon,” Halfdan grinned, a gesture that didn’t quite reach his clouded eyes.

“Which is why you are here. My daughter, Princess (y/n).”

A woman emerged from the shadow of a tapestry. She was beautiful, with eyes like the North Sea on a stormy day—a cool, defiant glare. She did not smile. Her gaze swept over Eivor, from his battle attire to the infamous scar that tore across his lip and cheek, a permanent snarl gifted by the wolf that had given him his name. Her expression was one of pure, unadulterated assessment, and he was found wanting.

“Father,” she said, her voice cool and flat.

“My daughter, this is Eivor Wolf-Kissed. You’re betrothed.”

The words landed in the hall like a stone. Eivor had been briefed by Randvi on the necessity of this alliance. Jorvik was a jewel, a powerful trade hub. An allegiance with Halfdan would make Ravensthorpe unassailable, a beacon of Norse strength in the heart of England. But knowing the reason did little to quell the rebellion in his own spirit. He was a drengr, a free warrior, not a prize stallion to be bred.

Her laugh was a short, sharp, humourless sound.

“Is this a joke? This… frontiersman? He is not even a true Jarl. I heard his brother, Sigurd, was the Jarl of Ravensthorpe before he was taken. What is he but a placeholder? A caretaker for a stolen title?”

The old wound, the one that festered deeper than any wolf’s bite, throbbed. Sigurd’s absence was a constant void. Her words were expertly aimed, designed to maim.

Halfdan’s fist slammed on the arm of his chair.

“Enough! You will hold your tongue! Eivor’s glory is earned with axe and sweat, not inherited. He is ten times the man any of your simpering suitors could hope to be. The marriage will proceed.”

Eivor met (y/n)’s furious gaze. He saw the spoilt princess she presented to the world, a woman used to getting her way now trapped in a cage of her father’s making. But he also saw, with a jolt that surprised him, a fierce and striking beauty that kindled an unwanted heat in his blood. He offered her a slight, conciliatory nod. It was ignored.

The following days were a frosty siege. Eivor, ever pragmatic, tried to make the best of it. He brought her a pelt from a white fox he’d hunted, its fur untouched. She thanked him with the warmth of a glacier and gave it to a servant.

He tried to engage her in conversation about Jorvik’s defences, its trade routes. She dismissed him, accusing him of sucking up to her dying father, of seeing only a kingdom to be added to his collection, not a people to be protected.

“You care nothing for my happiness or for Jorvik,” she stated one afternoon in the training yard, watching him spar with Halfdan’s huscarls.

“You only care for the alliance my name provides.”

Eivor wiped sweat from his brow.

“I care for the safety and prosperity of my clan, princess. Sometimes duty requires more of us than we wish to give.”

He meant it to be an olive branch, a shared understanding of their predicament.

She took it as a declaration of war. That evening at supper, she lavished her attention on a visiting Danish trader, a handsome man with oiled hair and soft hands, laughing too loudly at his jokes, letting her hand rest on his arm. The performance was for Eivor’s benefit, and it worked. A low, possessive growl coiled in his chest. He saw the flicker of satisfaction in her eyes and hated that she could get under his skin so easily.

Halfdan’s patience, eroded by pain and poison, finally shattered.

“You will ride with him tomorrow,” he commanded his daughter, his voice a weak tremble belying his iron will.

“You will show him the northern farms. You will remember who you are, and to whom you are promised. His patience shames you.”

The ride was conducted in near-total silence. Eivor pointed out a hawk circling overhead. But she merely sniffed. He was a brute, she thought. A landless, title-less killer with the manners of a wild boar, he was a pretender.

She would not give him the satisfaction of her conversation. She wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that she had watched him during that supper, seen the way the firelight played on the cords of his neck, the easy strength in his shoulders as he drank, and felt a treacherous pull low in her belly.

The attack came that night, under a moonless sky.

The first roar was not from a bear, but from a man. Then another. The clash of iron and the screams of the dying tore through Jorvik’s peace. Raiders, seeing a kingdom weakened by a sick Jarl, had come to carve out a piece for themselves.

Eivor was in the fray before most men had found their boots. His axe was a blur of silver and death, an extension of his own fury. He moved with a predator’s grace, a whirlwind of controlled violence that was, as his Raven Clan knew, almost inhuman. He fought not for glory, but for the future of his clan, and for Jorvik.

An arrow hissed past his ear, burying itself in the throat of a raider about to strike a fallen townsman. Eivor turned, surprised . There, on the steps of the longhouse, stood his betrothed. Not cowering. Not hiding. Her hair was tied back in a braid, with quivers carried on her back, a powerful hunting bow in her hands. Her face was a mask of cold concentration. She nocked, drew, and loosed another arrow in one fluid motion. It took a raider in the eye from forty paces.

By the gods, she could fight. The shock was a physical thing. The spoiled princess was a shield-maiden. The attraction he’d tried to suppress flared into outright awe.

He lost sight of her as the battle surged into a narrow alley between two storehouses. When he found her again, his blood ran cold. Three raiders had her cornered, her back against a wall, her quiver empty. She held a seax knife, her stance defiant but hopeless.

A sound tore from Eivor’s throat, a raw, animal noise of pure protectiveness. He was on them in a heartbeat. The first raider died before he even registered Eivor’s presence, his spine severed. The second met his axes edge, his own axe shattering under the force of the blow. The third turned to flee and found Eivor’s throwing axe buried between his shoulder blades.

Eivor turned to her, his chest heaving, adrenaline singing in his veins.

“Did they teach you that stance in court, Princess? A little wide. Leaves you open.”

The tease was automatic, a cover for the sheer, blinding fear he’d felt for her.

Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with astonishment. She had never seen such speed, such brutal, efficient power. He moved like a storm, he moved like her father, Jarl Halfdan.

“You… you fight like no man I have ever seen,” she breathed.

He didn’t see the fourth raider, a hulking brute emerging from a doorway behind him, a massive war hammer raised high.

But (y/n) did. There was no hesitation. She snatched the seax from the belt of a dead man at her feet, took two quick steps, and drove it up under the man’s ribcage with a grunt of effort. He gasped, his eyes wide with surprise, and crumpled at Eivor’s feet.

Eivor looked from the dead man to the bloodied knife in her steady hand. Impression flared in his eyes, hotter than before. He gave a low, appreciative chuckle.

“And you, Princess, have the aim of a Valkyrie.”

A new understanding passed between them. He nodded towards the main square. She nodded back. They fought their way out of the alley back-to-back, a deadly duo. He was her unstoppable force, a wall of iron and death. She was his unerring shadow, her reclaimed arrows finding every gap in his defense, every threat he missed. They moved in a lethal dance, a perfect, wordless symmetry of violence that even Halfdan, watching from the heart of the battle with a pride that cut through his pain, he had to admire.

When the last raider fell or fled, a weary silence descended, broken only by the moans of the wounded.

Eivor found (y/n) moving among them, her earlier haughtiness gone, replaced by a competent, gentle efficiency. She tore linen for bandages, staunched wounds, and offered quiet words of comfort. This was her people, and she was their princess.

He leaned against a post, finally feeling the deep gash on his bicep from a stray blade. He began to awkwardly try to clean it with a strip of cloth.

“Stop. You’re making a mess of it.”

She was there, holding a bowl of clean water and fresh linen. Her hands were deft and sure as she cleaned the wound.

“It needs stitching,” she murmured, her focus entirely on her work.

“It will heal,” he said, watching her face. In the flickering torchlight, streaked with blood and soot, she was more beautiful than ever.

He pulled his torn, blood-soaked tunic over his head to give her better access. Her breath hitched almost imperceptibly. Her eyes, against her will, travelled across the map of his torso: the hard plains of muscle, the old white scars that crisscrossed the newer, angry wounds of the night, the dark Viking tattoos that coiled over his shoulders and chest. She was staring, and he caught her.

A slow, knowing smile touched his lips. “See something you like, my Princess?”

A blush crept up her neck, but she didn’t look away.

“I am assessing my future husband’s resilience, Wolf-Kissed. It appears considerable.”

Her tone was meant to be flippant, but it came out breathy.

The air between them crackled, thick with spent adrenaline and a new, potent tension. The space between their bodies seemed to shrink. He reached out, his fingers, calloused and bloody, brushing a smear of soot from her cheek. The touch was electric.

She leaned into it, her eyes darkening with desire.

He lowered his head, his gaze dropping to her lips.

“(Y/n)…”

It was the first time he’d said her name without title or irony.

She closed the distance.

The kiss was not gentle. It was a collision of pent-up frustration, anger, awe, and raw, undeniable attraction. It was heat and teeth and a desperate claiming. Her hands came up to grip his bare shoulders, her fingers pressing into hard muscle. His good arm circled her waist, pulling her flush against him, the coolness of her leather jerkin a contrast to the fire on his skin.

It was (y/n) who pulled back, her chest heaving, her lips swollen.

“Eivor… wait.”

He stilled, his forehead resting against hers, his breathing ragged.

“I… I have not…,” she stammered, her confidence vanishing, replaced by a vulnerable tremor.

“No man has… I am a virgin.”

The admission hung in the air. Eivor looked down at her, at the proud princess brought low by a confession of innocence. A deep, genuine amusement warmed his eyes. He chuckled softly, the sound a rumble in his chest.

“Every man in the north wants you, and yet you remain untouched. That is a power all its own, princess.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face, his touch now infinitely gentle. “We have time. I am in no hurry. I find I would rather get to know the woman with the bow first.”

The relief in her eyes was palpable. The walls crumbled.

“I have been… insufferable.”

“And I have been a brooding oaf,” he countered.

“We were thrown together like two strange dogs. Some snarling was to be expected.”

She smiled then, a true, unguarded smile that lit up her whole face. It was like the sun breaking through a winter storm.

“Perhaps… we could start again. Tomorrow. We could ride out. Without my father’s order. Just… to talk.”

“I would like that,” Eivor said, his voice soft.

A long moment passed, comfortable now where before it had been strained. The night was cold. The adrenaline was fading, leaving a deep chill in its wake.

She looked at the ground, then back up at him, her voice timid, so unlike her usual tone.

“Eivor… would it… would it be alright if I stayed with you tonight? In your chambers?”

She rushed on before he could misunderstand.

“Not for… that. Just… I do not wish to be alone. The darkness feels heavier tonight. Just to… sleep.”

Eivor’s heart, a weapon he thought hardened to anything but battle, clenched. He took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Come,” he said simply.

In his chambers, he stoked the fire. They lay on the fur-covered bed, and he pulled her back against his chest, her body fitting perfectly against his. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, his chin resting on the crown of her head.

She relaxed into his embrace with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of all her previous resistance. In the firelight, watching their intertwined shadows on the wall, she found the courage for one last truth.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“For saving my people…and Jorvik.”

“We saved it together,” he murmured into her hair.

She was silent for so long he thought she had fallen asleep. Then her voice came, small but clear.

“They would be lucky, you know. The people of Jorvik. To have you as their Jarl.”